The Un-Women Center Stage?

The "True Equality" website features an epigraph from ole Ben Franklin, that paragon of masculine virtue (a portly tinker who advocated monogamy and proposed the intelligent, if ugly or weak, turkey as the ultimate symbol of American virtue):

We must all hang together,
or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.

While I suppose I can't disagree with Ben's platitude (he's a great writer, truly, but this statement is taken out of its proper context--the Revolutionary friggin War), I'm not sure what to make of the "National Men's Equality Congress," nor why such a congress should exist.

Men are probably discriminated against in some ways, some of the time, but the cold, hard facts are these:

Women are discriminated in more ways, more of the time; in worse ways, in more countries, in more serious ways. They earn less money, are more likely to be raped, disowned, mutilated, or even dismissed as unable to talk about electronics as well as men.

(This last evil happened to my girlfriend, a video artist who worked in the electronics section of a large department store and was routinely dismissed as just a girl, unable to recommend a good HD camera or find the RCA cords or whatnot.)

While Culture Project advocates for women artists via Women Center Stage, these guys busy themselves writing trite sophistry such as:

When we explain men's issues, women, men, liberals and conservatives could care less. Yet when we explain boys’ issues, women, men, liberals and conservatives care. Why? Protecting boys calls upon women’s instinct to protect; but protecting men wreaks havoc on women’s instinct to expect protection from us. Similarly, men, whether liberal or conservative, recoil if we fail to protect. Understanding boys’ issues therefore has a dual benefit: it helps us communicate our issues to others; and it helps us to know ourselves. Thus, just as the Chinese symbol for crisis incorporates both the danger and opportunity, we will discover both the depth of the crisis for boys and the depth of the opportunity for us all.

WTF? A guy called me the other day just to accuse Culture Project of misandry, which is hilarious and wrong; we have a male artistic director, general manager, tech director, marketing associate, publicist, attorney, graphic designer, etc. Of course, we have a female business manager, development director, festival director, producer, etc. We produce work by men and women. The women's festival's only three weeks long. We know men get the shaft, har har, sometimes; again, the point is, women get a much worse shaft, much more often.

If that idea "wreaks havoc" on you, my apologies. (Writers: stop using that phrase or E. B. White's ghost and I are going to find you and shaft you.)

Perhaps the most dangerous opportunity there is is to see that women aren't "women," aren't some noxious, conspiracy-forming group; just as men aren't even "men." Men earn more and have more opportunities because of a vast historical head-start. Women are catching up and will hopefully continue to do so. (Not that I'm voting for Hillary; that bitch is nuts.)

If anyone has info on the man-congress or is attending, please do write us.
I exit with two quotes from Anais Nin.

"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."

We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are.